


cassiopeia

by tarantism



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Astronomy, M/M, Mentions of Anxiety, Pining, Stargazing, fluff and comfort, lots of galactic metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 18:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19874068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarantism/pseuds/tarantism
Summary: in which wonwoo loves the stars, and falls in love with the brightest star of all





	cassiopeia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [owl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/owl/gifts).



> for the best experience, i recommend listening to the [cassiopeia playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1sdalA3NGVUVNOjWs0gwpF?si=y26-iQFGSwG3N-EewYjx9w) as you read.
> 
> i want to say a massive thank you to soonwoo net for getting me out of my writing hole. i've had this idea for a while now, but thanks to this 'mini'bang, i've produced not only this, but so much more writing in the past month than i have in a very long time. and thank you to the lovely isa for beta-reading this mess ilysm.
> 
> and i can't let you start reading without giving the biggest shout out of all to the amazing artist i was paired with. [keia](http://twitter.com/keiakiyay), thank you for taking my words and making them into something more beautiful than i could have ever dreamed.

Wonwoo loved stars. Bright stars, small stars, ones that claw through a misty midnight to parade their beauty just for him; no matter when or where, the night sky never failed to paint a picture he could lose himself in for hours in the evening. The beginnings of what had been a newborn star as a child, admiring the way a boy in his kindergarten class paraded around in his star-covered blue sweater, had transformed into a galaxy of thoughts and fascination that he still floated amongst to this day. Nothing made him happier than their absolute simplicity and undeniable complexity, a thought he has never truly wrapped his head around and supposes he doesn’t ever want to.

As he hears the bell ring loud and clear through the halls, signalling the end of the school day, Wonwoo closes his book with a smile plastered on his face. It may only have been Tuesday, but Tuesdays were his favourite day of the week. While most would say they’re useless – they’re not the beginning nor the end of the week, nor are they days off from school, and they’re not really the middle either – Wonwoo gets to fill his evenings in the comfort of his astronomy club, and he thinks that more than makes up for the nothingness most people feel. 

The class file out around him like a stampede, all ready to evacuate the building for as many minutes as possible; the dozens of feet sound like a drummer in his head. He pushes his glasses up his nose, attempting to drown out the thudding in his ears by packing away his books slowly – the longer he waits, the further away they get, and besides, he’s not in any hurry to get home. Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he realises his teacher has even left the classroom before he’s slid out of his seat. He’ll never understand the desire to flee the premises as quickly as possible. Wonwoo finally makes his way into the corridor, heading in the direction of the science block. 

It’s a miracle the club has managed to make it into a second year considering the only people who turn up are he, the supervising teacher, Miss Adelphi, and sometimes – if he’s really lucky – his friends Vernon and Mingyu. He pins it down to the fact he was able to convince a few of his peers to sign onto the committee, promising them they won’t have to do a thing. Wonwoo is fine with them not showing up, he’s used to being the only one in the lab on a Tuesday afternoon until the cleaners make an appearance. So long as he gets the chance to use the telescopes, Wonwoo is more than happy in his little bubble. It’s merely a bonus if Vernon or Mingyu show their faces in an attempt to understand his enthusiasm for his obscure hobby. He knows they wonder why he can’t just pick up a sport or join a chess team, but Wonwoo’s never been that good on his feet and his hand-to-eye coordination was bad enough that he was regularly picked last for games of dodgeball in physical education. Still, he loves his friends, it just so happens that he may love the night sky a tiny bit more.

Which is why when he hears a knocking at the door, the sudden appearance of a face other than his friends or supervisor startles him. It’s three weeks into the new school year, and usually by the end of September, most students have found the clubs they want to join. Wonwoo pushes his glasses up his nose and hides the telescope with his back, unready for the wave of nervousness that washes over him as the boy walks in.

Wonwoo recognises him, of course he does. He’s by far the most observant in their year, fading into the background like a wallflower growing on its vine. But, _because_ he recognises the boy, he is confused at his arrival. He was in the right room, it was definitely a Tuesday, and he didn’t have to leave until seven; Wonwoo doesn’t take his eyes off him as he waits for the boy to speak, pulling at the sleeves of his sweater with every step the newcomer takes.

“Hey, is this the astrology club?” Soonyoung asks, brushing his hair out of his face with a free hand, the other carrying his backpack by the handle, bumping against his shins.

Shifting on his feet, Wonwoo can’t stop wracking his brain for any sort of reason as to why the boy who makes such a class fool of himself in maths would ever show up to a club like this. For all he’s seen, he would have expected Soonyoung to be the last person to stay extra hours after school to do anything vaguely unrelated to sport. Still, he keeps walking closer, and Wonwoo can’t avoid replying forever.

“Astronomy.” 

“Yeah. What did I say?”

“Uh, astrology.”

“Oh,” Soonyoung pauses, looking around at the lab and the various pictures the sky from that evening that are being projected onto the board. “What’s the difference?”

Wonwoo shakes his head, scratching an itch on the back of his neck that only seems to be spreading with his growing nervousness, just like roots in the soil. “Astrology is like, you know, zodiac signs and stuff. Astronomy is about stars. Constellations. Supernovas. That sort of thing.” 

He hopes the nonchalant tone he adds to his voice works as a wall he’s began to build around himself for protection. It’s not a secret he’s in a club where he enjoys observing the stars, but Wonwoo’s also never had to worry about anyone knowing who he is or wondering why he’s speaking to Kwon Soonyoung. 

From the next four steps the boy takes into the room, setting his bag down with a thud on a table top, Wonwoo knows there is going to be a problem. Not only had he confused the nature of his little club, but the sudden desire to keep his actions and objectives secret sweeps over him as a tell-tale sign that the possibility of letting him into his little world is going to be a bad idea. 

“So, what are we doing today?” He hops onto one of the desks with a noise, swinging his legs, nowhere near long enough to reach the ground. Vernon sits just the same when he’s perched on tables, except if he wants to reach the ground then he can. Soonyoung in an anomaly, a star out of place in his familiar constellation. So recognisable, yet so unknown. 

“Do you,” Wonwoo clears his throat, pushing his glasses up his nose, a nervous tick he knows he possesses but cannot seem to help himself doing. “Do you even know anything about stars?”

The science laboratory is cold, the approaching winter chill is worsening every day as the days get shorter, but Wonwoo can tell the way the boy is practically vibrating is definitely not a case of shivers. Soonyoung pouts his lips and radiates an energy that makes him believe that maybe he is powered by his own generator, because no one has this much life to them after a full school day – not even Wonwoo on a Tuesday. 

“Nope!” Is the conclusion the boy comes to after maybe two minutes of silence, and Wonwoo can feel a sigh brewing deep in his chest. “But, I played this[ game about these polar bears](https://youtu.be/RmBy_3jNjqE?t=26) and the bear shaped stars when I was younger. It was a kid’s game so I don’t know how accurate it would be.”

Vague images of himself sitting at his dad’s computer desk, eyes wide and shining, smile widespread, completely enthralled in the journey of a tiny polar bear, flash before Wonwoo and he swallows the lump in his throat. _Bear shaped stars_. He played the exact same game as a kid.

“That’s Ursa Minor, or the Big Dipper.” He can’t help himself saying, pulling at the hem of his sleeves.

“Cool,” Soonyoung smiles and catches sight of the telescope behind Wonwoo. “Were you looking through that?”

He figures he wouldn’t have been able to hide it for the entire time the boy was here, especially since it is more than the size of his figure, but still Wonwoo feels his heart sink at the sudden mention of his favourite school telescope adjacent to him. He also wants to tell the boy that of course he was looking through it, because that’s what you do not only with a telescope but in a club where you observe the stars. Still, the pain in his chest pricks him like a thousand needles when he realises he can’t just turn Soonyoung away. They needed members, ones that weren’t just his friends helpfully signing on and appearing when Ms. Adelphi needed proof that they should continue funding his hobby. No matter how much he hoped this could be his and only his for as long as possible, he can’t tell him no.

So, he steps aside to allow Soonyoung the pleasure of taking in the polished silver of his favourite telescope; pointed straight at the open window in hopes that he could steal even a quick glance at Neptune in the clear dark sky that evening. He feels his heart in his chest far too clearly as the boy reaches out for it, as if it is an extension of himself and he will feel Soonyoung’s fingertips on the cold metal of its exterior like his own skin. The hairs on his arms are standing on edge, and he rubs them over the fabric of his sleeves to try and quell the goose bumps. 

Soonyoung lines his pupil up to the eyepiece and Wonwoo can’t believe how fascinated he is at the sight. He’s studied stars, observed them from a distance for so long that he completely forgot the experience of seeing them the way Galileo allowed for the very first time. The way Soonyoung’s mouth drops and lets out an almost melodic sigh in awe pulls at some of the strings inside Wonwoo; not even his friends had had such a reaction when he’d allowed them to take a look at the stars up close for the first time. Vernon had nodded and said they were cool, but still just, spots. Mingyu was even less sympathetic—he thinks he can recall a yawn, but Wonwoo shakes his head to return to the present.

“You know, my best friend calls me Hoshi,” Soonyoung says with his eyes still glued to the telescope, attempting to move the contraption to little avail. “It’s ‘star’ in Japanese. Not that he’s Japanese, he just took a class in it. Pretty sure it’s the only thing he remembers despite taking it all last year.” 

Embarrassed to admit he knows exactly whom Soonyoung is talking about, Wonwoo anxiously holds the telescope in fear the boy will manage to somehow move it from its placement despite the locks. He clears his throat, pushes up his glasses, and frowns a little in curiosity.

“Why does he call you that?”

Pulling away, Soonyoung stands back and smiles. His entire face scrunches up and Wonwoo feels himself freeze, blaming it entirely on that damned chilling winter breeze coming through the open window. Still radiating warmth and life beside him, the boy continues to grin as he pulls his bag over his shoulder.

“Because I’m a star at everything I do.”

He’s not sure how to respond, and Wonwoo knows this comes across clearly as he fiddles with the latch on the tripod holding up the telescope. He can feel his glasses slipping but he tries everything in his power to not push them back up the bridge of his nose, worried the rosiness of his cheeks will be too visible. 

Unsure of whether it was a joke or not, Wonwoo still cannot help himself think about the boy. Despite his loud personality, and disruption to his maths class, from what he knew Soonyoung did still manage to do extremely well in all his classes. The world often played cruel tricks on people, and Wonwoo thinks it is unfair that Soonyoung got a higher grade on their algebra quiz than he did, despite the boy getting thrown out a lesson before for throwing paper and Wonwoo spending every night of the week cramming what he could into his brain. 

With a roll of his eyes, Soonyoung chuckles heartily from his chest and shrugs, throwing his hands up in a big gesture that almost knocks Wonwoo’s shoulder. “I don’t know. Never asked him. Think it’s from something when we were kids, but Chan’s never said exactly what. It’s cute, though.”

A joke, _got it_. Wonwoo looks down at the scuff marks on the floor of the science lab, wondering how many other thousands of pairs of feet have walked where they stood at that moment. The scratches on the floor were like the lingering stardust in the sky, marking their presence for millions of years to come. He likes that he’s part of something so menial yet so important at the same time, despite feeling himself burning up like a white dwarf under the gaze of Soonyoung. All he can do is nod in vague agreement at what the boy has said in the hopes he doesn’t have to speak in his inevitably shaky voice.

The rustling of his backpack signals prematurely that Soonyoung is about to depart, before any other movement or audible notice is given. Meeting his gaze is difficult when he’s unsure of what the boy’s real purpose iss here, other than to waste his time, and he inwardly groans as he fails to not push his glasses up his nose with his forefinger.

However, just when the boy does turn to leave without even a goodbye and Wonwoo thinks he can finally go back to his original goal for the evening, time seems to stop at the sound of Soonyoung’s voice from behind him. Wonwoo throws a glance over his shoulder before his whole body turns to meet it, fixated on where the black-haired boy stands with a curious smile and raised eyebrows, words lingering on his lips. Wonwoo has to think furiously to recall what he said.

“So, do you, like, meet here every week at this time?”

When it clicks, Wonwoo thinks a new star is born. The twinkle in Soonyoung’s eyes since he pulled away from looking at Neptune through his telescope hasn’t faded like he expected, and he thinks that maybe the boy isn’t wasting his time after all. 

“Every Tuesday. Except the last of the month. The chess club use this room at that time.” Wonwoo nods as he begins running his hands together, trying to fight back a smile. 

“Every Tuesday except the last, got it.” Soonyoung repeats and waves as he moves to leave. “I’ll see you later.”

His hand snaps back to his side as soon as Wonwoo realises he’s been waving at an empty doorway for a minute after the boy has disappeared, cursing himself under his breath. He has no reason to believe that Kwon Soonyoung would ever show up again, but the slight possibility of his peaked interest courses through his veins like lightning. 

Which is why, when he shows up before him the following Tuesday, proudly perched on the top of one of the desks once more, Wonwoo is taken aback and falters in his step. Vernon, who happens to be trailing behind him, walks into his back due to the sudden stop and catapults Wonwoo further into the laboratory to face the boy. Soonyoung excitedly shakes Vernon’s hand, formally introducing himself even though Wonwoo knows Vernon is aware of exactly who he is.

“When did you join?” Vernon asks, saying more in the first five minutes of them setting up than he has at any other session Wonwoo has pleaded he come along to. He watches his friend out of the corner of his eye as he logs onto the computer at the front of the room, trying not to let the slight jealousy from seeing Vernon laughing at something Soonyoung has said get to him.

“I came along last week to check it out, but I guess today is my official first day as an honorary astrologer.”

“Astronomer—” Wonwoo raises his head to correct him, but Vernon beats him to it, earning a smirk and a glance from the boy as he continues. “Gotta get that right or Wonwoo will go ballistic.” 

“Right, he told me that last time. I’ll remember." 

With a slight sniff, Wonwoo catches Vernon's eyebrow raise in search of approval before he turns back to the desk, tapping away at the keyboard in front of him with the slightest frown on his face that could easily be mistaken for hard concentration. The computer takes its sweet time to load up, the spinning compass in the centre taunting him with every full rotation as he steals another glance in Soonyoung's direction. 

He can't figure him out. Hasn't the slightest clue whether or not Soonyoung is here for some ulterior motive, to mock him, or whether he genuinely and suddenly fancied him an astronomer. The questions keep expanding in his mind like the edges of the universe, never-ending, and he knows that at some point, when he has the answer, everything will collapse in on itself in a huge, catastrophic explosion. He supposes, reckons that, _yes_ , Soonyoung could be called a kind of white dwarf. Wonwoo hopes they never reach that stage, and that maybe, just maybe, his presence will be more of a blessing than any sort of hindrance that immediately comes to his mind. Whilst he was more than happy studying the skies in solitude, he admits it was a tad warmer whenever Vernon or Mingyu decided that they had nothing better to do than spend an hour or so with him in the allotted space; and now with Soonyoung seeming to cosy up to Vernon with a friendly smile on his face, he thinks they may even be able to call themselves a real astronomy club. 

As he pulls up the[ software](https://stellarium-web.org/) Miss Adelphi kindly allowed them to download onto his student account, the projector hanging above them from the ceiling like a suspended rocket ship casting the image of the screen onto the whiteboard behind him. Glancing up at the pair, he expects what he sees - his friend is still very much concerned with the conversation they are having, neither of them noticing the change that has been made, even as Wonwoo strolls across to turn off the lights. They whip their heads around, words fizzling out of their mouths until they stop talking in favour of watching Wonwoo stroll back to the board.

"We're not using the telescope thing today?" Soonyoung attempts to scan the room in the dark for any sign of the contraption that Wonwoo had attempted (and failed) to hide behind his back the week prior. To his misery, he can't see it, and something in Wonwoo's brain tells him that the boy is only there to mess about with the expensive equipment they never got to handle in class. He and Vernon are too similar. He's suddenly very glad that Mingyu is absent from the meeting also, for he doesn't even want to imagine the situation if the three of them teamed up to wreck the specialist items that the faculty had very kindly purchased in their favour despite the low turn out of students.

"I thought we'd get a picture of the night sky before we even think about getting out the telescope. We want to know what we're looking for before we can look for it, right?"

Ignoring the way he can clearly see Vernon rolling his eyes and hopping down from the table he's been perched on, swinging his legs, Wonwoo clears his throat and spins the mouse so the screen is engulfed in a virtual simulation of the picture of the sky that evening. It’s mostly black, making the room darker than it has been previously, with only a few pixels representing stars giving them any sort of light. 

"Why are you using a computer when we can just look out of the window?"

Halting his mouse movement, Wonwoo peers up at Soonyoung. The boy seems to be truly genuine in his query, eyes wide and filled with curiosity.

"I, uh..." Wonwoo pushes the glasses up his nose with his forefinger. "Well, not all the stars you can see on the computer can be seen with the naked eye. So, I just thought-"

"Seriously?" It startles Wonwoo a little, but as he watches the excited grin spread across the boy's features in the dark, illuminating his face like the Moon reflecting the Sun, he realises it's hardly an accusatory statement. "That's awesome. Are they hidden behind clouds or something?"

His heart thuds. Wonwoo is hardly used to public speaking, usually taking in knowledge for his own pleasure. He only ever shared random tidbits in excited outbursts to his parents when they were watching some drama on the television, or if they were out at a family gathering all packed with his cousins and aunts into their garden under the gaze of the night sky. He puts the sudden spike in his heartbeat down to the change of his status from student to teacher. His mouth is dry, but he swallows down his fear in favour of talking about the one thing he loves the most.

"N-no," Wonwoo chuckles, "I mean, not tonight. The sky is pretty clear today but because we're in an area with a lot of light pollution we-"

"Light pollution?"

"Uh, excess artificial light from things like street lamps, or cars, or even from our houses. Because we're in an area that emits a lot of extra, un-natural light caused by technology, it pollutes the sky and, I guess, washes out the starlight, makes it dimmer, less able to be seen. Hence why some stars are invisible in this area." He takes a breath, moving the mouse on the screen to find a perfect example of the kind of patterns in the sky he is talking about. Wonwoo knows that he's lost Vernon at this point. The boy is happy to come along occasionally, but when the subject actually turns to the reason the club exists, he tunes out and loses all interest in his surroundings, usually putting in his headphones. It's a nice change to have someone listening to him; it's a fresh new feeling that he's not experienced in a long time, and Wonwoo realises that he feels kind of awful for not believing Soonyoung would join his little, undercover 'star club' out of genuine interest. But what else was he supposed to think? 

"See here," he hovers his mouse over the intended spot he means to point out, using his finger for added emphasis on the larger whiteboard. "You may know this star. It's called Polaris, or the North Star, usually the one that people use when navigating their way just using their surroundings and no GPS. It's almost always visible due to the intensity and distance from the Earth." Taking a quick look at Soonyoung to see if he is understanding anything that comes out of his mouth, he sees the boy nodding, jaw open in wonderment. "Whereas if we take the Beehive Cluster here within the constellation of Cancer, despite it being one of the closest clusters of stars to Earth, the stars do not have the same intensity that can withstand the light pollution. They are drowned out, washed over in the city, until you go far enough out into the countryside and feel like you can see clearly for the first time." 

Catching himself before he accidentally trails off into mindless prose about the first time he experienced opening his eyes to the stars in the country, how he never knew he was blind to such beauty until he could finally see. Wonwoo takes a step back from the computer and composes himself. He has no idea if anything he just said made any bit of sense despite trying to paint a basic picture in as simple terms as possible. 

He hears Soonyoung approaching before he sees him, and the boy scoots past him with a smile to take his place in front of the computer. "Cool."

Unsure of what the boy plans to do, Wonwoo stands on his tiptoes to spy over the boy's shoulder, before realising he can turn and observe the board. He paces three steps backwards and makes himself comfortable perched on top of the clean teacher's desk, being mindful to avoid the Bunsen burner attached to the countertop. Letting his gaze bounce over all the stars painted on the screen, Wonwoo can't help but feel his heart swell and soar in his chest at the sight, even electronically displayed before him. It makes his fingers curl gently into the plastic edge of the desk, trying to keep himself in reality before he feels the gravity below him give out and can feel his mind and soul floating with the upwards pull of the galaxy, towards where the stars and the sky kiss endlessly amongst the midnight duvets strewn above them.

The board plasters personified art of the constellations across the screen as Soonyoung clicks on the button to add it to the picture of the night sky. It wakes Wonwoo up from his trance, and he readily turns his attention to the boy to his left.

"I never realised the stars were this cool. Look at these pictures!" He talks with his hands, throwing them up, gesturing to the screen with an enthusiasm he never would've expected from a boy he has never seen pay attention in class. "This dude is badass! He's fighting a fucking snake with three heads!" 

The portrait of the Roman hero adapted from Greek myths overlays the constellation of Hercules, and Wonwoo happily begins telling Soonyoung all about it - the stars and the mythology behind them - with such a glimmer in his eye, he wonders if maybe this is what he has been missing all along. He doesn't feel even a hint of nervousness in his veins now. He's living and breathing the stardust the elements of his body is made up of, and he can't help but let it all spill from his tongue in a golden shower of knowledge he hopes, wishes, prays the boy doesn't find too much. 

Soonyoung continues to show up week after week, even remembering in the final week of October that they had to change rooms in favour of the chess team holding their meeting there instead. In fact, the whole ordeal makes Wonwoo wonder why he preferred hosting the club meetings alone when the boy's blinding presence lights up his Tuesday afternoons more than the midday sun. He no longer has to beg for Vernon or Mingyu to show up; he doesn't need them now he and Soonyoung are happy to traverse the galaxy together. 

He's surprised how well they get along considering the vast differences in their social circles outside the club, and their general attitude to school. Never in a million light-years would Wonwoo have expected to find himself laughing and joking with someone like Soonyoung, but he supposes he never really knew the boy the way he does now before he joined the astronomy club. He learns that Soonyoung is a Gemini ("This is still not an astrology club." "Yeah, yeah. Whatever, star boy.") and only a month older than him - though by first impressions, Wonwoo would never have guessed he was younger than him. He learns that he has an older sister, and they love dancing with their grandma at her birthday parties. 

He finds out Soonyoung can draw, though the boy insists he’s not very good, he just does it because it’s nice, it’s simple. But Wonwoo’s caught glimpses of the caricatures he’s doodled in the tiny blue notebook he keeps in his bag, and he knows he is far better than he gives himself credit for. Soonyoung occasionally lets him see without protest, like the time he proudly displayed his visualisation of Hercules fighting the big bear in the sky; most of the time he snaps his book shut when Wonwoo enters the room after Soonyoung’s already arrived, and he can only see the drawing he’s been keeping him self preoccupied with for a matter of seconds. He learns so many small things about the boy, Wonwoo even wonders if in such a short space of time, he can call the boy his friend.

In return, Wonwoo teaches Soonyoung about the stars. He tells him about Galileo, and the Big Dipper, he tells him about black holes and Nostradamus, they even watch a video of the first moon landing when the topic one time turns from stars to space as a whole. Every time Wonwoo is surprised to see how the boy watches him with complete awe, asking more and more questions like a kid who doesn't know the answer to "why?" He rarely discusses himself the same way Soonyoung does, but he still feels strangely closer to him than he has felt to his other friends in a long time, and he's known them since middle school.

They are setting up the telescope for the first time since Soonyoung properly joined the club, and Wonwoo feels comfortable enough knowing the boy to trust him around the expensive equipment without the fear that he would be unable to replace it if it broke. Pushing back the smile that tries to pull at the corners of his mouth, he keeps focused on setting up the telescope rather than paying any attention to the way Soonyoung bounces up and down on the spot like a giddy child. 

Once the stand is fixed in place and Wonwoo peers through the lens of the telescope to see if it is pointed in the direction of the window he's about to open, he steps back and folds his arms across his chest. 

"Is it ready?" Soonyoung asks, grinning from ear to ear. His eyes shine as if he has never seen a telescope before, which Wonwoo knows for a fact he has, but finds endearing nonetheless.

With a nod, Wonwoo moves to the window, standing on top of one of the table-tops to reach at the locks. He's never understood why they lock windows on the first floor so tightly, especially in a science lab, but he grunts as he finally gets the last latch off and pushes it ajar for a clear view.

"Okay, you can look through it now, but please," Wonwoo hops down, approaching Soonyoung and the telescope slowly with his hands out slightly as if he were taming a wild beast, "be careful, okay?"

Soonyoung, who had been close to placing his eye over the eyepiece, pulls back slightly and pauses. The excitement on his face transforms into a smirk, and Wonwoo cannot believe the sight of the boy's raised right eyebrow before him. 

"Don't you trust me?"

He has to stop, faltering in his steps, before he regains his composure. In response, Wonwoo lets out a breathy chuckle and pushes his glasses up his nose as he approaches the boy, holding onto the side of the telescope.

"It's not that I don't trust _you_ specifically. There are very few people I would feel safe letting them use this without fear of it breaking." 

"Like?"

Wonwoo taps his foot and laughs once more, shrugging. "Like... Vernon, for one.” Soonyoung hums and nods in agreement. That boy is a walking insurance claim. “Then there’s Mingyu, Seungkwan from maths, you from a month ago, and..." 

"Me from a month ago?" Soonyoung breaks into a toothy grin, joining in the chuckling with a quizzical expression. "Am I really so different now?"

"Do I really have to remind you of the time we had that substitute teacher in maths, and you managed to break the projector?"

Bursting into a fit of laughter, Soonyoung takes a step back from the telescope and covers his mouth to hide the way it opens so wide to let out the joyous sound. Wonwoo wishes he wouldn't, he wants to see his teeth and smile, and he doesn't know why.

"I... completely forgot about that!" He manages to say in between gasps of laughter.

“Exactly,” Wonwoo grins, ignoring the way he feels the tips of his ears reddening as he turns to the telescope. “So count yourself lucky and tell me what you can see in the sky.”

Taking a few deep breaths to help his giggles subside, Soonyoung shakes his head at the boy with a smile still on his face and leans forward to look through the telescope. He screws up the left side of his face so tight and Wonwoo has to stop himself from breaking back into laughter before the boy can speak.

“Hey,” he says with his eye still peering through the telescope, hands firmly holding onto the sides to move it if needed.

“Mhmm?”

“What’s your favourite constellation, star boy?” 

Wonwoo swallows, far louder than he had imagined, and fumbles with his words as he processes the nickname he'd been given once again. He thinks the nickname suits Soonyoung better, considering his friends call him the Japanese word for star and all that, but he accepts it as another part of his own cluster and composes himself enough to answer coherently. Or, at least, attempt to.

Wonwoo wets his lips, grateful that Soonyoung is still pressing his eye into the lens far more than he needs to, but he'd rather the boy look at the magnified sky than the blush on his cheeks. Telling him his favourite constellation should be such a trivial thing, he muses, but he feels like he's giving a bit of his soul up to the boy and no matter how much he's enjoyed getting to know Soonyoung over the past few weeks, it's still something precious to him: a gathering of memories, of hopes, of wishes all contained into a single cluster of stars, brightest during March. Still, as he curls his fingers into his denim jeans, he allows himself to open up.

"Cancer."

"Like the disease, or—?"

Wonwoo shakes his hands furiously, wincing at the boy's quizzical tone as if he hadn't been the one to waltz into the club in his first week asking if it was an astrology group. _Figures._

"No! _No_ , not the disease. The zodiac symbol. The crab." 

Soonyoung pulls his eye away from the lens and gradually a smirk grows on his face. "I was just fucking with you. I know what you meant." Wonwoo isn't sure he's being honest, but nods along in half-relief. "So, why _Mr. Krabs_?" 

The back of his neck bristles with heat, Wonwoo rubs a palm against it to try and stop the prickling of his skin. He got the boy's reference. _Spongebob_. Ha, very funny, childish, he thinks with another nod, biting his lip. He can see Soonyoung recoil a little, lip curling down with his squint as he realises just how bad his joke had been. His grimace returns to his regular smirk after a few blinks.

"It's, uh, it's stupid. You don't wanna hear it."

"I asked because I do, I swear." Soonyoung nods, prompting him to speak, and Wonwoo lets himself speak because they boy's eyes are genuine.

He waits for the boy to pull himself up onto one of the desks, perched on the edge with his legs swinging, before he starts speaking; once Wonwoo opens up, however, he feels himself falling into a black hole and he just can't pull himself out or stop.

"When I was younger I used to have terrible nightmares, hated the dark, and always felt so alone whenever it was time for me to sleep." Wonwoo tests the waters, glancing up once to see if Soonyoung really wants to hear this story before it gushes out. He's already fixated on him, and Wonwoo tries to ignore the blush he feels on his ears and neck. "My parents, _ha_ , they used to get sick of me always calling out for them or crawling into their bed in the early hours of the morning, so, one day, my dad took me down to a local crafts shop nearby where we lived and told me to pick out one of the glow in the dark star packs to put on my ceiling." He smiles fondly at the memory, and stops pushing his glasses up his nose incessantly. "I couldn't choose—there were so many. I loved stars back then too, but not as much as now. My dad grabbed one for me and showed it to me: Cancer. When we got home, the first thing we did was put those stars on my ceiling and I actually forgot to ask him why we were doing this before we went to the shop. My dad told me that whenever it is dark, stars are always there to guide you, to show you that there is nothing to be afraid of. And Cancer, well, Cancer was special, because not only was it my birth sign, but it's the second dimmest of all constellations. It's hardly visible for most of the year, but we always know that it is very much there. He told me whenever things seem out of sight or out of reach, to think of my constellation, because it makes me feel less alone."

He blinks, hard, thrice, before shaking his head and ruffling his hair simultaneously. "Sorry."

"Wow, I never realised a constellation meant that much to you."

"Really?" Wonwoo scoffs, moving over to the computer to load up his programme.

"I mean, I knew you liked them, but that was really something. Do you still have the stars up in your room?" When Wonwoo doesn't answer, instead dragging the virtual sky around with his cursor, Soonyoung hops down and skips over to his side. "You do, don't you?" 

"I—" 

"I knew it! You're gonna have to show me those one day— _hey_ , show me Cancer on this map of yours, then." 

He types in the name and the map of the sky lights up with the picture of his constellation. Sliding the mouse over to Soonyoung, he lets the boy drag and click to his heart's desire, letting the idea of the boy coming around to see his glow in the dark stickers on his childhood bedroom ceiling play on a loop in his mind. It makes him smile and push the glasses up from the end of his nose, wanting to return the question.

"What's your favourite constellation?"

The pause is brief, but Soonyoung turns to him with a glimmer in his puppy-dog eyes and his lips in the form of a pout. "I'm not sure yet. I'll have to get back to you on that. Though, I'm not sure mine will ever have as much meaning as yours, star boy."

The two of them laugh and head back to the telescope to get as much use out of it as they can before they have to pack away. Wonwoo lets Soonyoung use it for the majority of the time, considering his newfound interest in the hobby, and he finds it weird that he spends almost as much time looking at the way the boy lights up when he spots another significant star in the sky as he does looking at the sky itself. He can't fight the feeling that is brewing in his chest and stomach, like something has been eclipsed for far too long, and is finally coming to light. He worries he doesn't have the right protection for what is coming.

When it hits seven, the two have to pack away and say goodbye despite Soonyoung's surprisingly hesitant whines. He laughs at the boy when he admits he never thought that staying at school late would be enjoyable, packing the telescope securely into its locked cupboard.

Before Soonyoung parts after his final wave to him, Wonwoo calls out as he scoops up his bag, wrapping his scarf around his neck. The shorter boy stops in his tracks with a quizzical tilt of his head.

"I just wanted to ask," Wonwoo hesitates, hoping he doesn't come across as rude. "Why did you decide to join the astronomy club?"

The boy rises and falls on his feet in a quick thinking motion, rubbing his cheek which is patterned with newly growing teen stubble just waiting to be cut for the first time in his life.

"I don't know, actually. I just figured, why not, y'know? I had nothing better to do." 

To say he wasn't disappointed would be a lie, but Wonwoo decides it's better than the boy not showing up at all in the first place. With a small smile in thanks for his honesty, Wonwoo moves to turn off the lights when he feels Soonyoung catch his arm with his hand, stopping him in his tracks.

"That's a lie. To tell you the truth, even though I know nothing about them, I have always felt kind of drawn to the stars. As a kid I always used to wear these shirts and sweaters painted with cartoon stars or whatever - courtesy of my mom, of course - but there's something magical about them that I can't put my finger on. They make me feel grounded, both literally and…. Yeah. This whole thing you've got going on has really helped me understand that better." 

Then, like a shooting star, the boy is gone in a number of seconds, and Wonwoo is left wondering if what he saw (or in this case, heard) was real. But Wonwoo doesn’t have to question it at all, because he saw the way the boy’s eyes lit up at the meeting and he knows that something in him aligned like the stars in their constellations.

Wonwoo wishes he knew the name of the sensation he begins to develop every time the end of day bell rings to release the class on Tuesday, knowing full well that in a matter of minutes he will be facing a full-cheeked smile and boundless questions for hours straight that make his heart race faster than the speed of sound. He knows he's not having a heart attack (he looked it up online, and aside from the quickening of pulse he had none of the other symptoms), but he can't put his finger on what it is about Soonyoung that makes him feel so at home, so familiar with the boy, as if he's known him for countless lives before the one they are living now. Either way, he's never won anything in his life, but somehow he feels as if he's won some sort of cosmic lottery by being graced with the boy's enchanting presence. He just wishes it extended beyond the confines of their own little galaxy there in the science lab.

Which is why, when he invites Soonyoung over for dinner by accident as they're packing away their equipment for the day, he counts his lucky stars when the boy agrees with an open mouth smile and a teasing remark about meeting his parents. He doesn't know what possessed him to ask him over a discussion about the most recent supernova taking place in 1604, and the likelihood of another one occurring, but the question explodes from him like the subject matter; despite his initial embarrassment, he is extremely glad he asked.

"Should I wear something special?" The boy asks, shoving a library book on stars he'd borrowed and brought along to show Wonwoo back into his bag ("Did you know that you can just, like, borrow books from there? For free!" "Crazy." "I know right! But I thought you'd like this. See, here: this one's called Draco like in _Harry Potter_..."). The look on his face is mocking, eyebrows raised and tongue pushing at his cheek through a smirk; Wonwoo pretends he hasn't seen it and he pulls off his glasses to give them a clean as if he hadn't already done so less than five minutes ago.

"Special?" Wonwoo just about manages without choking. He doesn't know what's gotten into him, but he feels his pulse quicken again and his cheeks are unbearably warm. He's grateful his back is half turned towards the boy and that the room is stuffy enough to blame his flush on a sudden surge of heat.

Soonyoung zips up his bag with little care, almost taking the zip off before swinging it over his shoulder violently. "Yeah! I'll be meeting your parents, right? Or are you going to cook?" 

"No, my mom will be cooking."

"Exactly. So, shirt and tie?" His voice is teasing again. When Wonwoo opens his mouth and is both unsure and unable to say anything in response, Soonyoung giggles and bounds over to him. Throwing his arm around his neck, he ruffles Wonwoo's hair with his free hand even though he is significantly shorter than him. "I'm kidding, star boy. I'm just curious to meet the people who raised you and see if your house is anything like how I picture it to be." 

"What's that supposed to mean?" He finally says, pulling himself out of Soonyoung's capture, moving his glasses so they sit right on his nose.

"Is your dad an astrophysicist?"

"No, he’s a teacher. Why?"

"Damn it. So close."

Soonyoung begins to skip away and Wonwoo's brow creases. "Those two aren't even slightly similar." 

Waving his hand in dismissal with a whistling sound from his lips, Soonyoung bounces out of the room with the details of the date, time, and location of where to meet for Wonwoo's impromptu dinner... date? Wonwoo pushes the thought from his mind with a scrunch of his nose and a shake of his head, but a smile is still forged at the corners of his mouth that is impossible to chase away. 

It's a Friday when he hears the faint rap on the door of his house. Wonwoo has never been a fan of Fridays. They feel like a layover when you're getting off a plane and waiting to board the next one. They're the space in between his hectic school schedule and the tranquillity of the weekend, and for that reason he has never liked them as much as he loved Tuesdays. But, this one Friday is an exception, and he has been looking forward to it all week; a mixture of anxiety and excitement swirling in his stomach to the point where he can't tell them apart. He doesn't know why it's such a big deal, it's just dinner, and his dad won't even be there. But, the thought of Soonyoung spending time with him outside of their astronomy club is enough to make butterflies hatch in his chest and flutter around to their heart's content.

Soonyoung knocks on his door around six in the evening and it takes less than a minute for Wonwoo to reach the door, pausing to not seem quite so eager before he opens it with an expression of nonchalance as best as possible. He's never even had Hansol or Mingyu round for dinner before, so the experience is already alien to him. However, he doesn't know why he is acting so different when the boy before him pulls out one of his ear buds and sends him the same toothy grin he always receives at the start of their club.

"You have a nice house," Soonyoung muses once Wonwoo has given him the 'grand tour', and they've said their quick hellos to his mother ("Smells delightful, Mrs. Jeon. And you look lovely, too." "Thank you, Soonyoung. You should come round more often. Wonwoo and his brother never give me nice compliments like that." "Okay, mom. We're going now."), ending up in his small, cosy bedroom before the food is ready. "And I like your mom."

"Yeah, she's cool."

Wonwoo perches on the corner of his bed uncomfortably as if it isn't his own, wringing his hands together as he gazes at Soonyoung's form moving amongst his familiar possessions with such ease. The boy leans in to look at framed photos on top of his desk and swipes books off shelves to flick through nosily, all whilst avoiding the various binders and shoes Wonwoo has on the floor and was unable to pack away in time before the boy's arrival (he blames his class English project on the state of his room entirely, barely making it out of the house in time that morning). 

“You really have everything star-related known to man, huh?” The boy grins as he runs his fingers over the patterned tote bag he has hanging off his wardrobe, painted with personified pictures of the constellations holding supplies. Wonwoo doesn’t answer; he knows he doesn’t need to. It’s merely the boy voicing his thoughts out loud and he finds himself enjoying the boy’s recollections.

When Soonyoung finishes his sweep of the room, he falls back carelessly onto Wonwoo’s bed, hands behind his head and freezes. A smile spreads across his face and he points up at the ceiling, Wonwoo following his finger until he stops at the mixture of glow in the dark stars he has still plastered across it. He feels less embarrassed than he should knowing he still has his childhood decorations in his room because of the explanation he had already given Soonyoung in regards to why, but he had never told the boy that he was still in that same room and had never attempted to even paint over them in all his seventeen years of life.

"They're still on your ceiling." Soonyoung sings, and Wonwoo is glad to hear that it isn't teasing. Wonwoo stands up and moves to switch off the lights, painting the room pitch black with spots where the stars glow dimly above them. "Wow. So that's Cancer?"

"And some other stars that my dad and I stuck around it, but yeah. That's Cancer."

"I like seeing it not on a screen."

He can't help but chuckle at the statement, because he doesn't know how looking at a recreation of a constellation on his ceiling is any more real than seeing it displayed in pixels on a screen. Making his way back to the bed, Wonwoo carefully lays down on his back next to Soonyoung, making sure not to brush him as they look up at the ceiling of stickers together. 

"I wanna go stargazing." Soonyoung turns his head to the side and Wonwoo can make out the way his eyes are shining with curiosity in the darkness of his room. "I like looking at the stars through the telescope and everything, and the stuff you've taught me has made me really wish we could look at the night sky outside of our fucking school lab. Wouldn't that be cool? Some place with, uh, with, what's it called... low light pollution! Yeah."

He realises after about a minute of silence that Soonyoung is waiting for him to respond, and Wonwoo clears his throat, turning back to the constellation dotted on his ceiling. He’d been stargazing once with his dad when he was younger and had never done it properly since, more than satisfied to observe the sky during his club hours when he felt less alone knowing there were four walls around him. Still, he thinks back to the enjoyment he felt just laying out under the wide canvas of the midnight sky, painting lines between the brightest stars with his paintbrush fingertip. 

“I guess the best place for that would be on the bank just outside of town,” His voice is soft, reminiscent, and he can’t help but smile. “If you wanted a good spot for it, I mean.”

“You’d have to come too.” Soonyoung inputs, sitting up so his silhouette is almost leaning over Wonwoo. “I couldn’t go without you, star boy.”

Wonwoo feels his heart in his throat and his stomach feels as if it’s twisting, contorting, somersaulting in his lower abdomen. Now would be a bad time to throw up, is the thought he has, as he stares into the shadowy features of Soonyoung’s face that he knows all too well by now. Even if the room was completely pitch black and he was unable to make out a single feature of the boy, he knows he would be able to paint an accurate portrait of Soonyoung from memory alone like the ones in the boy’s secret notebook. The space between them feels so close, yet so infinitely distant, and he doesn’t know what it means as the silence drags on like the universe expanding indefinitely.

“Wonwoo!” His mother’s voice echoes from down the corridor, breaking the silence in the air. “Dinner is on the table!”

Soonyoung leaps up to switch on the light, the pair of them squinting in synchronisation after being in the dark for however long they had been lying there. The stars go back to being just unnoticeable stickers on his ceiling and the spell is broken; Wonwoo sits up and ruffles the back of his hair where it had become unruly from laying on his sheets, making a move to stand and join Soonyoung as he opens the door to head for the dining room. He stumbles over the binders on the floor that Soonyoung had somehow so elegantly managed to avoid with ease, following the boy closely as they make their way out of his bedroom. 

Just before they reach the table, Wonwoo observes Soonyoung stop and almost runs into his back as he glances at what the boy is looking at. A picture of Wonwoo in kindergarten hangs next to one of his younger brother, smiling a goofy smile under a head of messy, badly cut hair.

"Is this you?" Soonyoung asks with a hint of a chuckle, pointing a finger at the frame. Wonwoo nods and pushes his glasses up his nose. "When was it taken?"

"When I was five, I think? Maybe six? One of my years in kindergarten."

"Where did you go?"

Wonwoo pauses and pulls at the sleeves of his long blue shirt. "Uh, Lexington. Downtown."

"No shit!" Soonyoung curses, quickly slapping a hand over his mouth and lowering his voice in case Wonwoo's mother didn't approve of foul language in her house. Wonwoo finds it endearing, not telling him that his brother has said way worse under their roof. "Me too. Class of 2003. To think we might have known each other." 

He tries to think back to his time at the school, but Wonwoo's memories of that age are very few. Aside from the boy in his class with the star-patterned sweater, he remembers very little and...

It _can't_ be.

Soonyoung laughs and smiles, almost skipping to the sound of Mrs. Jeon's voice and the smell of the prepared food. Remaining frozen to his spot in the corridor, Wonwoo swallows and watches after the boy as he disappears, leaving in his place the memory of the little boy Wonwoo used to admire as a child, always laughing and playing in the sandpit with his blue starry jumper. The same gummy smile is a snapshot of Soonyoung's, and Wonwoo feels something explode in his heart and brain like a supernova. It was _him_. The boy from kindergarten who made him fall in love with stars from the ones he wore on his chest. He’d been the brightest star he’d ever had the pleasure to observe. 

He doesn't know what to say. Does he tell Soonyoung that he's the reason he used to ask his dad to buy him countless books about stars, spend relentless hours on the internet looking up videos on astronomy and space just to feel a little closer to a boy he had lost touch with and forgotten over time? He decides he shouldn't, his relationship with Soonyoung is already limited to the tiny thread that is their after school club and he doesn't want to scare him away with the information he's just remembered. Because, who recalls that much about someone they weren’t even close to as a child? 

"Wonwoo, hurry up. It's getting cold." Mrs. Jeon calls from the next room, and Wonwoo breaks himself from his trance to join her and Soonyoung around their four-person table.

When Soonyoung leaves later, Wonwoo waves at him from the front door step for long after the boy disappears from sight. He’d barely spoken at dinner, much to his mother’s chagrin, but Soonyoung had spouted answer after answer to anything she had asked him all with a smile on his face amongst compliments on the food. Wonwoo doesn’t know how he never realised who the boy was earlier when the connection between his sole memories of first school was so strong, and Soonyoung still looked like the same round-faced, chirpy child he always was. There was always something about him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, as if there were something more to just his jokes and loud persona that drew Wonwoo in when sat in class despite the annoyance that he had disrupted their learning.

He vaguely remembers Soonyoung mentioning his friend’s reasoning behind his nickname. Hoshi. Something to do with them as kids. His starry sweater. Everything was falling into place as if the Gods were aligning the stars right before his eyes. He was the star boy, not Wonwoo, and he wanted to scream it from the rooftops into the silent night sky. 

Wonwoo’s brother catapults himself onto his bed later after barging into his room, carrying a plate of leftovers he manages somehow not to spill on top of his duvet. He watches his brother dig into the food as he sits on the window seat, where he had previously been daydreaming and staring into the wide expanse of the sky. Usually his younger brother’s intrusion would have caused him a great deal of irritation, but for once he cares very little about his privacy being invaded. 

“What’s with that face?” Bohyuk says in between chews, balancing the plate unsteadily on his open palm so that it teeters from left to right ever so slightly.

Shifting, Wonwoo turns back to the window and resumes his gazing into the sky through the glass, unaware that he had been making any sort of face but now feeling as if he has to hide it. “Mmm?”

“You wanna, you know, talk?” 

“There’s nothing to talk about. I’m fine.” Wonwoo nods, thinking he sees a dotting of stars in a similar shape to the ones on Soonyoung’s jumper when he was a kid. 

Bohyuk hums in clear disagreement, taking another bite of the food. “Ma said that you were quiet at dinner. Didn’t you have a friend round?” 

“I’m normally quiet.” 

“Yeah,” his brother rolls his eyes and pushes on, “But you had someone over. Man, I’d feel so awkward only talking to Minhyuk’s parents for an entire dinner. They’re nice but I would probably think he was ashamed of me or something if he didn’t say a word. Anyway, Minhyuk and I won this game of Overwatch this evening and—” 

Wonwoo zones his brother’s voice out as he rattles on about his own best friend, knowing he’s never really had anything in the same vein as his brother. But, his prior words resonate with him. Had Soonyoung thought that he was ashamed or embarrassed by him? He doesn’t think that he’s the type of guy to think that, but then again, how well does he really know him? Aside from the small, seemingly insignificant details he’d dropped over the course of the two months that their worlds had re-collided, Wonwoo knew that it wasn’t the same as knowing the boy all his life. He wishes he had. He wants to know Soonyoung as more than a friend, and the new knowledge of their childhoods being linked confirms to Wonwoo, who has never believed in fate or any of that bullshit, that maybe there was something about them, some kind of gravitational pull that is bringing them together. Their lives are undoubtedly entwined, and Wonwoo can’t help but smile at the thought of him teaching the boy that made him love stars so much, all about the stars. Maybe magic wasn’t as unreal as he initially believed. 

“—him, right?” 

It takes him a few blinks over a number of seconds to remember that his brother is still there on his bed, talking to him. He bugs his eyes a little at Bohyuk in an attempt to read his brother’s face. 

“I’m sorry,” he answers, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I wasn’t listening.”

“I figured.” Bohyuk laughs, standing up from the bed with his empty plate still balanced on his palm, now with his cutlery placed on top. “Your smile told it all, though.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I said, you like him, right?” 

The question catches him off guard, and Wonwoo takes his glasses off in an effort to clean the lenses with his shirt and give him an excuse not to look his brother in the eye. 

“Of course I do.” 

“No, I mean. I’ve seen you around Hansol and that other tall guy at school and it’s not the same. Ma asked me if you were dating.” 

His breath comes out of him with the force of a hurricane, leaving his mouth and throat dry. Wonwoo coughs and runs a hand through his hair; he’s grateful the world around him is blurry for the time being because he can’t face him properly after such a statement. His heart clenches and he can’t place why. 

“I—we’re not.”

“I said that too, but you haven’t looked this serene in such a long time.”

“He’s just my friend. He joined the astronomy club and he liked learning about stars.”

Bohyuk rolls his eyes again and paces towards the door, opening it with his free hand. “I’ve never met the guy, but my friends know who he is and if you ask me, it’s not the stars he stayed for.”

Wonwoo doesn’t know how to talk to his brother about this subject, his cheeks flushing hotter than a dwarf star ready to explode. He’s never been one to discuss his feelings; especially not to his sibling whom he always felt had it all: friends, confidence, ease. Wonwoo internalised and that was fine by him, had been since he was a child and had left kindergarten. But now, Soonyoung had come orbiting back into his life like the first eclipse in twelve years, and he can’t help but find himself drawn to him without any protection for himself or his feelings. Was it true? He knew he liked him, but liked him as something more than a friend? He ponders the thought, and Wonwoo realises he wants to map out constellations in whatever freckles he may have dotted on his skin, wants to know about the deepest recesses of his heart as if he is traversing parts of the galaxies not yet discovered. Wonwoo wants to kiss him, and he wonders if that is so unbelievably stupid. He’s known him all of two months, but he can’t help but think that with Soonyoung, that’s more than enough time to fall in love with the stars in his eyes and the aura he emits.

That evening he spends most of the night staring at the ceiling, watching the stickers glow dimly in the black of his room. Wonwoo tries counting sheep to fall asleep but it never works, especially not when his mind is playing over the scenes of the evening and things that could be if he had the confidence to do them. He moves to counting the stars on his ceiling instead, full stars, small stars, stars that have peeled or been moved out of sight but are still visible in the darkness. The compactness of the clusters makes him feel as if he’s looking out over a bustling city of stars, each with their own lives, their own jobs, their own significant others that their light diffraction makes it seem as if they’re holding hands. He stargazes until his eyelids feel heavy searching the sky of his ceiling for his own heart, and his body is warmed by the idea of seeing Soonyoung during school.

The weekend is long but he spends it distracting himself with homework and playing video games with his brother, dodging questions from his mother about when next he will be inviting around “that lovely boy” for dinner again. He contemplates buying tickets to visit an observatory in the next town over for he and Soonyoung to visit instead of their usual club activities. It’s not a date, he tells himself, all whilst the idea of kissing Soonyoung plays over and over in the back of his mind. Wonwoo chickens out of the idea at the last click of his shopping basket, but the smile on his face is hard to ignore.

Come Tuesday, Wonwoo thinks he’s never enjoyed a day more; Tuesdays are consistently his favourite, but there’s something about that first Tuesday of November that makes him feel on top of the world. Soonyoung is loud in his maths class in the afternoon, but Wonwoo for once finds himself smiling to himself in the back as the other students laugh at his gags and the teacher tries to quieten them all down. The clock ticks down to the end of school – or the start of his astronomy club – and he half-races down the hallway to the regular science room before the previous class has even completely filed out. He nods at the teacher as they pack up and leave, darting into the room so he can unlock the cupboard and set up the telescope with the idea of taking it out to the school field to show Soonyoung a better view than the one from the window of the building. 

He waits for ten minutes, then another, then another, but Soonyoung doesn’t show up. Wonwoo checks his phone for the date, knowing he is correct but double checking in case he was wrong and it was the last Tuesday of October instead. But if that were the case, Jihoon and Minghao along with the rest of the chess club would already have shown up, and he knows for a fact that he is in the correct spot. So why, he asks himself, is Soonyoung not there?

Clicking onto his messages as he bites his lip and swings his legs as he perches on top of one of the tables, Wonwoo clicks onto Soonyoung’s contact. They don’t text super often, except for when Soonyoung sends him memes or Wonwoo builds up the courage to send him an article from NASA or some amazing galactic discovery he thinks the boy would like. Still, he scrolls back through the messages to check if the boy had mentioned any prior engagements after school, to little avail. He’d been in his class and had been fine, and Wonwoo can’t think of a reason as to why he wouldn’t be there unless there was some kind of emergency.

 _Man, I’d feel so awkward only talking to Minhyuk’s parents for an entire dinner… Would probably think he was ashamed of me or something if he didn’t say a word_.

His brother’s words from the Friday just passed resurface in his mind, and Wonwoo takes off his glasses to run a hand over his face. Did Soonyoung think he was ashamed of him? Surely not. He knew Wonwoo’s demeanour, and sure, he had been preoccupied with the sudden revelation of their connection but that couldn’t be the reason.

Wonwoo brings up his keyboard and takes a deep breath in through his mouth, filling his lungs so that his heart didn’t hurt when thudding against his chest so hard. He doesn’t want to sound needy nor like he is panicking, composing himself for a second before he sends a message asking where Soonyoung is.

“I hope I didn’t scare you off on Friday. If there’s anything you need, let me know.” Wonwoo says as he types those exact words, pressing send with a hesitant finger. He immediately regrets it, but what’s done is done.

It takes him a minute to slip off the counter and wonder what to do next. He had always run this club alone, enjoying spending time with just himself and the night sky; but in the space of a few short months, Wonwoo found the idea of traversing the galaxy through the lens of the telescope alone extremely unattractive. He runs a hand along the metal of the telescope, turning the focus and flipping the catches that hold it in place.

When he hears footsteps behind him, Wonwoo twirls around with a smile on his face that is far too wide to justify. Except, when he sees Ms Adelphi strolling in with an armful of papers to mark the grin on his face falls almost immediately, a respectful smile and hello leaving his lips as she sits down. No one else follows, and Wonwoo realises that the boy is most definitely not coming. His heart sinks and it _hurts_ , hoping that nothing is wrong. He’s had no updates over text, and Soonyoung hasn’t read the message because the text still shows his plain blue ticks.

So, he packs up early about thirty minutes later – he would’ve done so sooner had Ms Adelphi not been there, but he feels his nerves building in his chest at the thought of ending the club so early in case she thought he was no longer interested in running it after school. She thinks nothing of the sort of course, but Wonwoo gives her a feeble excuse as to why he has to leave, packs up, says goodbye and makes his way off the school grounds an hour earlier than usual.

The rest of his week is… strange, to say the least. It goes by in a blur and Wonwoo almost forgets to complete an assignment, something he never ever does. It feels like he’s floating aimlessly with nothing to ground him, and his insides are making him feel queasy.

When one of the football team players approaches him by his locker the following Monday, he almost completely shuts off the interaction in his brain. He thinks his name is Jeonghan, but he’s not sure, he’s never been into sport or the whole school team spirit thing. He just knows he’s friends with Soonyoung because he sees him in the canteen with the boy occasionally when Wonwoo decides to eat inside. Only when he’s recalling it all later that evening does he question why on Earth he had approached him and asked about the best way to get to the fields a town over, and when was the best time to go. He supposes it’s some sport season and they’re looking for good practice spots? He’s never been into sport, doesn’t even know if he’s correct, but he questions why the boy didn’t just ask his coach about the best place to practice.

The site for the observatory stays open on his laptop behind his word documents and email, and only when he accidentally minimises one of the screens is Wonwoo faced with the image of the inside of the observatory and the displays they put on for visitors in their planetarium. He’s never been, but something in the way the website glitters with projections of the stars on the walls draws him in and convinces him that he needs to stop being afraid and buy the tickets. So he does, clicking the button to pay without hesitation this time. Dear God, he hopes Soonyoung likes it.

He prints off the tickets and sticks them in an envelope, making the front with an ‘x’ without thinking. Wonwoo checks his phone and still, Soonyoung has neither seen nor replied to his message. He sleeps late that night after counting stars for what feels like years, even the faint glowing of Cancer unable to lull him into a sweet dream. 

Another week goes and Soonyoung shows up to classes, but not the club. Wonwoo can’t shake the feeling that it really is him that he’s ignoring because he messed everything up when inviting him round for dinner. He replays the evening over in his mind, and can only pin it down to the time when they had seen the picture and everything had fallen into place.

The envelope of tickets stays in his bag until the following Tuesday when Wonwoo only briefly sticks his head into the classroom on the third week of November and confirms that once again, the boy isn’t there. Wonwoo doesn’t even stay, instead grabbing the straps of his backpack as he walks down the emptying halls of the school, passing by his locker on the way out to dump any unneeded books for the next day.

As he pulls open the neat locker and shoves the heavy AP physics book he’d been carrying around all day into it does Wonwoo finally pull out the envelope. The paper makes his fingers feel numb as he twirls it in his hands, unsure of what to do. Wonwoo lets out a scoff with a shake of his head, pushing up his glasses as he slams the locker with more force than he had intended. He’s so stupid. Of course it was only a matter of time before someone like Kwon Soonyoung had gotten bored of him. I mean, come on! _Kwon Soonyoung?_ He had known the type of person that he was from the moment he had stepped into his astronomy club, and he was not someone who hung around with the likes of nerdy, quiet Jeon Wonwoo. But despite this, something in his chest aches again because he had genuinely thought that maybe, he had read the boy wrong, that he had judged him by what he had seen and not what he truly knew. Even as a kid he had been so full of life, surrounded by people all wanting to be his friend; why would Soonyoung give up all of that for a stupid club ran by an even more stupid, love-sick boy?

He feels himself gritting his teeth and turns to walk down the corridor. Only, he stops in his tracks when he spots him ten feet away, crowded around his own locker with two of his friends that Wonwoo knows as Chan and Junhui. Feeling a strange surge of unnatural confidence, Wonwoo moves his feet towards the boy in an effort to make him notice him, the envelope firmly in his grasp. When he comes to a halt in front of Soonyoung, he can tell that the boy is surprised and it takes a second for Wonwoo to compose himself because he’s never seen Soonyoung look so shocked at him before. He shakes it off and pushes up his glasses, taking a deep breath.

“Hi.”

Soonyoung nods at him, eyes darting to Junhui and Chan who stand motionless, unsure of what to do or say when the energy that Wonwoo is giving off is clearly not positive. “Hey.”

Wonwoo thrusts the envelope in his direction, ignoring the surge of electricity he gets in his fingertips as they brush the other boy’s hand as he takes the paper from him. “I was gonna say we could go together, but you clearly have other people you’d rather hang out with so, I hope you have fun if you decide to go or whatever.” 

As he turns to walk away, he tries to ignore the confusion and softness in Soonyoung’s eyes that he sees when he stares down at the sealed ‘x’ envelope.

 _You know,_ Wonwoo thinks to himself, unable to say the words out loud in front of other people no matter how much he wants to, _it was nice having a friend that actually cared about me for a while. I’m sorry I wasn’t interesting enough for you._ He wasn't fit for people with short attention spans, or better friends and things to do. Wonwoo likes the same things he's liked since he was a child, and Soonyoung rarely stayed on one subject for longer than five minutes. Maybe it was good to cut the ties on their friendship now before Wonwoo was sucked into the black holes of his eyes too quickly. 

“Wonwoo!” Soonyoung’s shaky voice echoes behind him but he ignores it, shoving his hands into his pockets as he barges through the school doors and begins to make his way home. 

Any semblance of hope that maybe Soonyoung would come after him in apology, giving him any sort of sorry explanation as to why he'd disappeared off the face of the planet and acted as if he had no idea that Wonwoo existed, dies when he leaves the school grounds. Every minute he thinks, maybe, now is when he'll hear him behind him. But he doesn't, and instead Wonwoo quickens his pace and fails to get any sort of comfort from the glimmering of stars beginning to shine down on him from above.

He distracts himself that evening with homework in place of where he would usually still be in the science room, heart filled with joy at the simple pleasures the astronomy club brought him. Instead, maths takes its place and Wonwoo begins to give the decimals in his book little points to look like pole stars. He sighs and sits back, throwing his pencil onto the desk so that it bounces with a few hollow thuds and lands on top of his other books. 

When he takes a seat by his window amongst the pillows he'd gathered there, he pulls both his knees and one of the cushions up to his chest and gazes out into the night sky. He can just make out where the town turns into hills from where his house is centred, and Wonwoo wishes he could drive so he could just take himself out into the open fields and lie out under the sky without Soonyoung on his mind. But as he sits there in the dim confides of his room, listening to his parents and brother through his door whilst he keeps his eyes pinned to Ursa Minor, he can't help but feel a loneliness that his hobby used to mend.

He wonders if Soonyoung is looking up at the sky like him right now.

Wonwoo pulls his curtains closed shortly after he climbs off his window seat and heads for dinner, ignoring the general dinner table chatter in favour of pushing his vegetables around his plate. He sleeps the earliest he has in years and makes sure to hide the starry tote bag in the back of his wardrobe where he doesn't have to think about Soonyoung's comments from his prior visit.

As he hears the bell ring loud and clear through the halls, signalling the end of the school day, Wonwoo closes his book with a frown on his face. It was only Tuesday, and Tuesdays were now his least favourite day of the week. Most other people would say they’re useless – they’re not the beginning nor the end of the week, nor are they days off from school, and they’re not really the middle either – and Wonwoo agrees. He gets to fill his evenings with homework and trivial chatter around the dinner table, and he thinks that he only has one more year until he's off to college and doesn't have to live through long Tuesdays ever again. Or Wednesdays, or Thursdays, et cetera, et cetera.

Exams and Thanksgiving and Christmas are on everyone's minds, but Wonwoo feels himself wondering the halls on autopilot daily, collecting the same books for the same classes, moving in amongst the same people at the same pace. He forgets to wave to Hansol when the boy makes an effort to greet him in the hallway, only to make Wonwoo feel even worse about himself for the rest of the day.

Ms Adelphi has put the astronomy club on hiatus for lack of members showing up, and Wonwoo figured it would happen. He was the only one keeping the thing alive despite forcing Mingyu and Hansol to put their names on the club roster; he rarely shows up any more and the school can't keep funding computer programmes and equipment if it's not going to be used. It's his fault, and it's another thing to add to the long list of things making him feel shitty and alone and without a star to wish on for it all to get better.

It's another one of those days, except this time he's sat in class just before his history lesson and Hansol is borrowing his book to copy his homework last minute. He would usually help him out and explain everything to him, but Wonwoo's too tired. The scratching of his friend's pen on paper at a sonic speed is strangely relaxing, and at this point he's worried he's going to fall asleep before the teacher even shows up. 

" _Psst._ "

Wonwoo furrows his brows and turns his head ever so slightly so he can side-eye Hansol with as little effort as possible. "What?"

"This just came out of your book." Hansol cocks his head and slides a small folded piece of blue paper onto his empty desk.

Pausing for a second to consider Hansol, he turns back to the front and picks up the scrap of paper in his fingers. It looks like exactly that: just scrap paper he'd probably used to mark the book in place or something. But, as he moves to pocket it, Wonwoo catches sight of the inside of the paper briefly and shifts in his seat as he opens it up. Displayed in gold gel pen on the page are the words "I MISS U" formed from tiny drawn stars. It takes him a few nose scrunches and repositioning of the paper so that the light doesn't reflect the ink too much to read it, but that is definitely what is written there. 

"What is it?" Hansol asks nosily, clearly looking for a distraction from his homework that is due in less than five minutes. 

Wonwoo looks at him properly for the first time in what feels like weeks and it's as if he's wide awake. He takes in the boy's messy chestnut hair peeking out of the red beanie he wears on his head and the way he's drumming his fingers on his cheek. 

"Did you write this?"

The answer seems so obvious but he needs to check, and Hansol shakes his head with a look of confusion. "No. Why? What does it say?"

"Nothing," Wonwoo quickly shoves the note into his pocket, not caring if it's crumpled or ripped. "Just someone's notes from class I must have picked up by accident." 

Hansol doesn't look entirely convinced, but he also doesn't look like he cares enough as he turns back to Wonwoo's homework. Wonwoo slumps over his desk and rubs his face with his hands, trying to make sense of what is swirling in his brain. 

He almost manages to laugh when the teacher walks in moments later and calls out Hansol's frantic scribbling in the back. (“Mr. Chwe, I'm sure you're actually just writing down any notes on your presentation you have due today, but if you would be so kind as to give Wonwoo back his homework, that would be much appreciated." "W-We have a presentation?" "Luckily for you, no. But you can complete your homework alone in here during lunch break, how about that?") Because of it, he forgets about the note in his pocket. 

As the next few days go on, Wonwoo starts getting more and more little scraps of paper (all varying in hues, from pastel to royal blue) in his books or locker. All of them are decorated in gold gel and the majority of them are notes written in star-formed letters, though a few depict a cartoon star with smiling eyes next to another one with round-framed glasses. Wonwoo ignores them all until he's trapped inside of class and for the first time since the year had started, Soonyoung decides to switch his normal seat at the back for the one directly behind him by the window. He silently curses Jihoon for moving. 

It had been hard enough ignoring Soonyoung after the first attempts at contacting him through little notes, ones he knew immediately were his from the familiar stroke of his pen from his notebook doodles. But, he had convinced himself in the evenings as he lay in bed staring up at the glowing stars on his ceiling, that it wasn't really Soonyoung - it was actually Mingyu or his brother playing some stupid joke on him. If the boy wanted to contact him, all he had to do was text him, but the message he had sent him weeks ago still lay unread in his inbox. 

Wonwoo finds yet another piece of paper on his desk ready and waiting and he pushes it aside as he takes out the algebra books to put on his desk. The tapping of a pen on the desk behind him leaves him constantly aware of the boy’s presence, but he tries his best to read through the chapter they were focusing on for that lesson. It’s only when the teacher finishes her initial sermon to start the class and gives them a few equations to have a go at solving, that Wonwoo finally cannot resist the note on his desk.

 _Hey Starboy_ , it reads and Wonwoo frowns when he feels something in his chest pulling tight like someone re-stringing their guitar. He doesn’t understand why Soonyoung can’t just talk to him; send him a text, why he has to communicate with him through little notes with drawings or compliments for him. Wonwoo turns around and slips the paper onto Soonyoung’s desk without a word before turning back to his book. 

Another note slips into his lap about five minutes later, followed by another. He wants to tell him to stop, but their teacher’s eyes are scanning the room, making sure her students are getting on with the work. So, he unfolds the papers and allows himself to take in the messages that read: _Are you mad at me?_ and _Can we hang later?_

Wonwoo cranes his neck to meet the boy’s eyes as best he can and he reminds himself not to look at them for too long in case he can’t look away. When Soonyoung stares back at him with hopeful eyes and a small smile, Wonwoo feels almost bad shaking his head in an answer – to which question he isn’t sure, but it’s enough to send Soonyoung slumping back in his chair. He places the notes on his desk with a firm yet quiet hand, hoping that says everything he needs to say for the time being, especially when his heart is not playing a sad melody on that guitar. 

“Mr Jeon, is there something you so desperately want to share with the whole class?” The teacher pipes up, and Wonwoo snaps his head back to the front, hand following shortly after as she approaches him with her arms folded. He swallows, unused to being singled out in class for any reason, let alone one that is seemingly negative. 

The already quiet class feels even more silent all of a sudden and Wonwoo is worried that if he breathes it will make more noise than the end of day school bell that is going to ring in the next half hour. He shakes his head at her and plays with his fingers in his lap after pushing the glasses up his nose. “No, Miss.” 

“Then we don’t have any need to pass Mr. Kwon notes in class, do we? I’ve had enough disruption from my other classes today and frankly, I’m tired of it. You can see me after class, Mr. Jeon.” 

He doesn’t know what to say, because he’s never gotten detention or anything similar in his entire school career, but also because he doesn’t know how to articulate to her that he wasn’t the one passing notes. He was trying to stop it from happening for his own heart’s sake. Wonwoo supposes Hansol will be proud. _Figures_.

Instead he nods as the teacher comes to retrieve the scraps off Soonyoung’s desk and sinks down in his seat to focus on his work again. Except, as the teacher arrives and scoops them up, he feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up at the sound of Soonyoung’s dramatically loud voice. 

“He wasn’t the one passing the papers, Miss. I was giving him the drawings because I wanted to speak to him about the questions and he gave them back because he said no. It’s not Wonwoo’s fault.”

“Spartacus, I see.” The teacher taps her fingernail on her bare forearm and shakes her head with a sigh. “Well, then. If you’re so bent on disrupting my class then you can join Mr. Jeon in detention today. How does that sound?” 

He expects a protest, but Wonwoo hears nothing of the sort. Instead, the tension in the class is high and Soonyoung seems to accept the punishment assigned to him. Wonwoo refuses to turn around again in fear of his patrolling teacher scolding him further, but the sad song in his chest turns to one of skittish glee, and he wishes he could give thanks to the boy for at least trying to right his classroom wrongs.

So the rest of the lesson passes and Wonwoo receives no more notes from Soonyoung, probably out of fear of what their teacher would do if she caught them passing notes again, seeing as she seemed to be having an extremely tough day. Still, he gets very little done when his mind is on the boy behind him and he wonders what on earth he is going to say to him once they’re finally set free from the confines of classroom detention. He snaps out of it when students around him begin to pack away and he feels his teacher’s eyes watching him like a hawk, keeping him glued to his seat.

They follow her to a different classroom in silence and get seated at 4:30 when most other students have already filed out to go home for the weekend. Wonwoo blows the hair out of his eyes as he’s directed to the opposite side of the room from Soonyoung, and decides to get started on work he has due before the Christmas holidays start. He hopes it keeps him occupied enough that he doesn’t spend the hour they are being held there looking over continuously at Soonyoung. 

Detention is a weird limbo, Wonwoo finds out, and he realises it fits well with how much he hates Fridays. Whereas the weekend layover is unpleasant every week, adding detention into the mix makes it feel like Wonwoo is waiting for a further delayed flight and is anxious to be anywhere other than a stuffy airport – or in his case, classroom. He hopes his mother isn’t wondering where he is enough to start worrying, but he doesn’t want to bring the subject up at the dinner table if she happens to ask. Making a mental note to give her a text as soon as they’re allowed onto their phones, Wonwoo makes himself as comfortable as possible and opens a textbook.

Soonyoung seems well equipped to staying after school, for every time Wonwoo looks over despite himself, the boy is leaning back in his chair playing with something he’s made out of paper. Wonwoo thinks he can feel his gaze on him more than once over the course of the hour and it makes his ears burn red to the point he has to hide them with his sweaty palms.

“Time’s up. You’re free to go,” they are told without emotion when it hits 5:30 exactly and their teacher looks up from where she is grading work. “But next time keep the note passing to lunch break. You’ve got tests coming up in a week and I don’t want you wasting time distracting each other.” 

The pair of them nod, and Soonyoung stands up remarkably fast to leave (seeing as he hadn’t unpacked anything onto his desk) as Wonwoo struggles to shove his books into his bag with as much dexterity. Instead, he just bundles what he has on his desk into his arms and swings his backpack over his shoulder, nodding to his teacher in a half-assed goodbye.

As Wonwoo steps two feet out of the door he is blindsided by Soonyoung grabbing his shoulder and pulling him out of the doorway, the pair of them standing by a row of lockers in the empty corridor. Wonwoo blinks thrice and struggles to carry the textbook, pad and pencil case he has balanced in his arms, relieved - albeit a little surprised - when the boy takes the heavy textbook out of his grasp. 

“So, are you?” Soonyoung asks, eyes curious and sad in a way Wonwoo doesn’t think he’s seen before. It feels like such a long time since he’s heard the boy properly speak to him, even if it’s only been a month – a month can change a lot of things, he thinks. The earth rotates thirty times on its axis, and the skies seem to change with every night that passes. 

He doesn’t quite understand the question the boy is asking, pulling his backpack off his shoulder to properly put his equipment inside without having to worry about hurrying out of detention. 

“Sorry, am I what?”

“Mad at me?” 

It takes a few seconds of Wonwoo pursing his lips and Soonyoung carefully sliding his textbook into his backpack helpfully before he properly thinks about it. He’s spent the entire month wondering if he was mad, whether he’d been the one who had done something wrong, when things started to change, and why. But as he listens to the faint sound of the cleaners vacuuming in distant classrooms that seem to harmonise with the drumming of his heart and the melody of Soonyoung’s breathing, he realises he’s not. He’s over the initial shock of having Soonyoung there and then just, not. But he thinks he got most of the frustration out of him when he shoved the observatory tickets into his possession and left that part of him behind. Still, the constant notes had been a mental block in his mind for the past week and Wonwoo wants to know what suddenly changed once again for Soonyoung to reach out in such an impossible, impractical way.

“Not really.” He decides on, zipping his bag up slowly.

“You have every right to be,” Soonyoung nods, his voice quieter than usual and without its usual playful lilt. “I’m not great at apologies but I thought it might make things lighter, more easy if I sent you those notes and drawings. I never meant for you to get detention.”

“Why didn’t you just text me?” Wonwoo prompts, unsure of where Soonyoung is going as he processes that the boy is taking responsibility for not reaching out. It wasn’t him; he hadn’t scared him off at the club or at his dinner. Now, he wonders, what could it possibly be? 

Soonyoung runs his fingers through his messy black hair a few times, looking as if he’s searching for the right words to say as he pushes at his cheek with his tongue. After a deep breath, and what feels like an hour in Wonwoo’s impatience, he finally finds the answer. 

“I never told you about the real reason I joined the astronomy club, did I?”

Wonwoo thinks back to the first few weeks they’d spent together in the labs, slowly sharing facts about each other in piqued curiosity, and how he had asked him that exact question before. 

He shakes his head and rocks on his feet. “You just said you felt drawn to their magic or something. I felt the same.”

Soonyoung looks like he’s about to speak again, mouth open and ready to reveal all, but he stops himself when a sudden idea seems to pop into his head. The boy stands up straighter and grabs Wonwoo’s wrist enthusiastically, causing Wonwoo to jolt a little in surprise and stare down at their connected skin.

“I know you don’t have a reason to hang out with me, but if you could trust me, would you let me take you out stargazing? To that hill just outside of town – the one with little light pollution and all that shit? I know I haven’t been at the club in forever, but I really miss it and want to do this with you and the stars.”

Wonwoo stares at him, blinking intermittently. Before he can stop himself and remember to call his mother like he’d promised himself, he finds himself answering. “Yes.”

So that’s how Wonwoo ends up in the passenger seat to Soonyoung’s shabby car, nothing fancy like he’d imagined, but exactly the type of first car Wonwoo was hoping of getting as soon as he could afford to take lessons. He feels himself relax as he once again finds himself relating more to Soonyoung, leaving him in wonder of why the sudden outburst of proposal for a trip. And to, no less, the one place Wonwoo had told Soonyoung about when the boy had asked about the possibility of stargazing. It feels both familiar and new, the drive out to the hill that he had done so many times with his father as a child, and now as a teenager with Soonyoung. It brings him a strange comfort to match the icy breeze of the wind travelling through the already dark sky.

Soonyoung sings under his breath the entire drive like he’s impatient and restless but can’t say what he needs to say right now, and Wonwoo is wracking his brain for any kind of reasoning to any of this. He appreciates the boy’s timing, however mysterious, because the sky is clear and it really is a perfect night for stargazing out in the open.

Wonwoo directs the boy the last few twists and turns out of town and onto the dirt road that takes them to the hills, parking up at the bottom of a dirt path many a hiker or dog-walker have created over the years. The pair of them try to make a mental reminder of where the car is parked as Soonyoung grabs a large towel and envelope from the back of his car and shuts the boot before walking off. It’s his swimming towel and the only thing he has to lie on, Soonyoung says, promising it’s clean with a hint of a smile that Wonwoo warmly lingers on as they walk. He doesn’t ask about the envelope he puts in his pocket. 

“You reckon here?” Soonyoung stops at what they believe is the top of the hill, looking out over the top of the town in the distance. Before Wonwoo can nod, the boy is already laying down the towel as a make-shift blanket on the grass. “Yeah, this is nice.”

“Soonyoung, why did you want to take me here?” Wonwoo finally asks, crossing his arms over his chest in the shrill air. He regrets not wearing a coat as he shivers in his grey cardigan and brown turtleneck, but takes a little ease from knowing Soonyoung too is only donned in jeans and a blue sweater of his own.

The boy pauses as he takes a seat on the blanket, leaving enough room for Wonwoo to his left. He appears to swallow before letting out a breathy, nervous laugh, the air escaping his mouth turning into visible grey vapour before his eyes. He taps the spot beside him for the boy to sit, bringing his knees up to his chest like a small child.

“I started to get really bad again about a month ago,” the sentence catches Wonwoo off guard as he slowly lowers himself onto the blanket beside him, a reasonable gap between them. “I’d been doing so well and my mom told me, you know, keep taking your medicine because that’s what they’re there for! If you go off them, you’ll spiral. I hadn’t felt as good as I had been when joining the astronomy club in a long time, y’know. It was nice, simple. I didn’t have my friends or teammates around me expecting the fucking world of me. I really thought that maybe you were my lucky star or something, that you had made my anxiety go away so I didn’t have to take those stupid pills every day just so I could play a part others wanted me to.” Soonyoung catches his breath, his voice soft despite the subject, and Wonwoo feels a weight in the pit of his stomach. “So, I didn’t take them for a while and things got bad again, and I couldn’t show up even if I wanted to. I couldn’t text you, couldn’t do anything for a while. Anxiety is like a black hole, it swallows you up and you can’t escape it unless you treat it and take every day as it comes.” 

“I had no idea…” 

“No one does.” Soonyoung sniffs and laughs a little, looking down at his feet rather than up at the sky. “Took my friends by complete shock when I first told them. ‘You’re so confident, so loud! You can’t possibly have, like, _actual_ anxiety, right?’ I’ve heard it all.” 

Wonwoo nods in reassurance that he’s hearing what the boy is saying, pulling the sleeves of his sweater over his hands as he thinks back to all the times the boy could’ve shown signs. Then it dawns on him.

“When you said, uh,” Wonwoo clears his throat and catches himself as Soonyoung looks at him straight on again, eyes sparkling under the stars. “The reason you joined the club, it was because you felt the stars were magic. They grounded you.”

“Yeah. Both literally,” Soonyoung raps the grass beside them with his fist, and then taps the side of his head after with a smile on his face, “and mentally. I hope you realise that it’s really helped me a lot since this semester started. Learning new stuff on Tuesdays where I don’t have to be part of any sort of team, or goof off in class with my friends… it’s the best part of my week. I have a lot of fun.” 

A smile crawls onto Wonwoo’s face and he shakes his head, “You should try telling Hansol and Mingyu that. They would never agree with you. They think hanging out with me at the club is boring, and I get it, I’m not the most desirable person to spend time with.” 

“I disagree. I’d rather spend hours looking through telescopes with you than hanging out with any of my other friends.”

Wonwoo feels his chest tighten and he’s grateful for the darkness of their surroundings so he can easily hide the blush on his face. He doesn’t know how to respond, so he picks at the grass beside him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t. I thought you’d treat me different or hate me or all these other things I was telling myself you’d do. I’m getting better now, but at the time the only way I knew how to maybe get through to you was to send you those notes, but then you got in trouble and I…” 

“No,” Wonwoo shakes his head and cuts him off before Soonyoung rolls into another self-deprecating spiel he doesn’t think his heart can handle, “that’s not something you have to apologise for. I, uh, shouldn’t have been so aggressive in the hallway that time…” 

“You thought that was aggressive?” Soonyoung’s smile once again replaces his face of sincerity. “Man, you’re so cute.” Wonwoo pretends he didn’t hear that. “But, thank you as well, by the way – for those planetarium tickets. I took my mom and she, well, she was pretty blown away by the stuff I was telling her. She said I looked happy, and that made her happy. I think she wants to meet you, star boy. Oh, and I have something in return, here."

The envelope Wonwoo had seen him tucking into his jeans earlier emerges once more and Soonyoung takes one of his hands gently to place the paper onto it. He tries to ignore how warm and soft his skin is against his own. 

“What’s this?” Wonwoo raises an eyebrow, turning the envelope over in his hands. 

“It’s not planetarium tickets, if you’re wondering.” Soonyoung prompts him to open it with a nod of his head and gesture with his hands, so Wonwoo pushes up his glasses and follows suit. 

He’s careful not to tear what is inside as he opens the envelope, pulling out the contents. It’s a piece of paper folded in half, but it’s thicker than standard school paper and he can make out coloured ink through the sheet which makes Wonwoo wonder if it is another one of the boy’s drawings. Unfolding the top so it pokes out of the envelope, Wonwoo is taken aback by the writing and decoration displayed across the paper.

“You named a star after me?” Wonwoo barely has time to take in the words on the page before he turns to Soonyoung with wide eyes. He doesn’t know what to say, a mixture of emotions coursing through his body. The boy reaches over for what Wonwoo thinks is his hand, but instead Soonyoung pulls the rest of the star certificate out and grins toothily in his direction. 

When Wonwoo glances back down at the page now no longer hidden, he squints through the darkness and can just about make out five letters in cursive ink printed onto the card under a ton of coordinates.

 _The star with the coordinates RA: 14h56m17s | NOV: 40_ **_°_ ** _12m6.0s | HIP: 56801 was successfully entered into the star-naming registry on 28_ _th_ _November 2019-06-20 under the name_ **_HOSHI_** **.**

He has to stop the explosive laugh crawling up through his body from exploding out of his mouth, and Wonwoo clamps his hand over his lips to stop any sound come out. Still, his shoulders bounce and his eyes water at the complete absurdity of it, happy to see Soonyoung laughing by himself at the certificate too.

“You named it _Hoshi?_ And you gave it to _me?_ ” Wonwoo barely manages through gasps, having to place the certificate on the ground so he can hold his belly to stop it from hurting with every breath. He sees Soonyoung shrug through his blurred vision, wiping his tears away under his glasses so he can look at him properly. “You do know these are fake, right? No astronomer is going to recognise a star in the galaxy as Hoshi.”

“Yeah, I know. My mom told me the same thing,” Soonyoung shrugs once again with a smile, laying back down on the towel for the first time, hands behind his head. He looks the happiest and most content Soonyoung has seen him in weeks and his heart swells. “It may be bullshit, but I like to think that there’s a little bit of me in the sky now whenever I look up at it. It makes me feel like there’s no reason to be afraid anymore when I’m looking up at my star, and it’s shining down on me.” 

They sit in silence for a while, or, rather, Wonwoo sits in silence, gazing down at Soonyoung as he proceeds to stare up at the sky. He isn’t sure if he’s looking for ‘his’ star, or if he even knows where abouts it is in the vast galaxy of theirs, but Wonwoo can see the serenity and security the boy feels in that moment in the way he’s relaxing on his back with the nicest smile on his lips and in his eyes. Only when Soonyoung points up at the sky and notices Hercules at the edge of their sky, almost out of their sight until April, that Wonwoo tucks the certificate away safely in its envelope and decides to join Soonyoung on the blanket fully. 

He rests his head on one of his arms as the pair of them point out different stars, patterns, constellations, and clusters they know for what could have been hours or could have been days. Wonwoo shows him the pole star bright in the sky, and lolls his head to the side to take in Soonyoung’s complete wonderment at the sight. It’s something he had forgotten about since he was a child: experiencing the pure, unadulterated wonder of the galaxy without streetlights and assistance to help you see; just the naked eye on top of a hill was all you needed to feel like you were seeing for the first time in your life.

Soonyoung muses occasionally, saying how he wishes he’d planned this better so he could’ve brought hot chocolate along, or some of his sister’s leftover Halloween candy she’d been saving for weeks. Wonwoo appreciates the thought and agrees that hot chocolate would be amazing right now, but he’s more than content being out here for all it’s worth. The boy agrees too, touching the back of his hand to Wonwoo’s where it lays at their sides. Wonwoo wants to tell him what he knows about the boy so badly, and tell him that Soonyoung really helped himself, not him, because without him and his starry sweater and the way Wonwoo used to admire him as a child, there would be no astronomy club. He’s the real star boy. 

But, before he can think of the words to start that conversation, he feels Soonyoung tapping his cold fingers against his palm, causing him to take his eyes off the stars and instead plant them firmly on the delicate, round features of Soonyoung’s face. 

“Wonwoo, I never really asked. Why do you love stars so much? Looking at them, studying them, the whole lot. Is it just that story with your dad and the stickers? It seems so trivial that you’ve been so into them for so long, and have taught me so much, for just that reason alone.” 

It takes him another few seconds to process the boy’s words. A few weeks ago if he’d told him his answer, he’d be afraid he’d be over-sharing in the same way he felt he had been when telling the story of his favourite constellation to him. But now Soonyoung has been so open, so vulnerable with him, Wonwoo feels like he can just speak what he’s been keeping cooped up inside him for years out loud, letting it gush out like a waterfall or avalanche that cannot be stopped. The air is still chilly, but it’s comfortable and Wonwoo no longer feels like there’s ice in his veins, but stardust. 

“For me… they’re distant lasting memories of things long since gone. Their light lasts for billions of years; which is funny, because they seem so infinite—they outlast us past our death, and yet, they’re no more alive than we are. They’re at their brightest when the sky and everything around it is in darkness. They’re wishes and hopes, on birthdays, on new years, on seemingly meaningless days until you spot the brightest light and trail out of your window. They’re inspiration when you think you’re stuck in a rut. They’re beacons when you feel lost or alone. They’re fairy tales for kids to pass down to their own children in the future. You’re looking up at the same sky a couple of billion other people on Earth share and are looking at just like you. They’re things to count when sheep aren’t enough. They’re like glow in the dark stickers on the ceiling, but never peel off or get painted over. Even when there are too many clouds in the sky, or it’s raining, or you’re in a city with lights bright enough to drown out the twilight, the stars are always there shining down on you. They bring courage and strength, and lead even the strongest of men through darkness. They’re more precious than any gold, silver, or diamond in any dark crevice on Earth. They waltz with the planets across the ballroom sky, and sometimes you can’t tell them apart unless you look very closely at the way they shine. They’re so far—millions and millions of light-years away—and yet they feel so close. Maybe because, in the end, we’re all made up of tiny bits of stardust, and finding my place amongst the stars feels a bit like finding home. And I…” Wonwoo halts, breaking himself from his trace, barely able to remember any of the nonsense he’s sure he’s just said into thin air. He bites his lip and finds the Pole Star to steady himself, knowing he can’t find stability in Cancer’s constellation at this time of year. When he gets no response from Soonyoung, he closes his eyes to draw in a breath before continuing. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get so poetic. Sometimes I can’t help myself from thinking that the skies and all the constellations we see were made just to be viewed by me. I know it’s stupid, but it helps.” 

“No one talks like that.” 

He figures he was speaking in rhyme and Wonwoo curses himself for going so Shakespeare on the one person he desperately did not want to scare away. Still, he turns his head slowly towards Soonyoung with cautious, apologetic eyes and tries to laugh off the ridiculousness of what he just spouted. “Well, I do. Sorry.” 

“No, don’t apologise,” Soonyoung affirms him. “I mean, people don’t just burst out into poetry like that in real life. You’re like a movie. It was beautiful to watch, I just… I wish you could’ve seen your face just then as you were speaking, the same way I saw you. You had the lights of a thousand galaxies in your eyes.”

And Wonwoo can feel it. He can feel the stars aligning as he lies with Soonyoung, gazing into the endless midnight of his pupils as his pulse thuds in his ears. He feels like they are orbiting around each other, in amongst the other planets, waltzing like the stars he adores so much, even though they are lying quite still on the threadbare, cotton towel together. 

Out of habit he opens his mouth to say sorry again, because what can you say when the boy you want to kiss so badly responds to you with something so beautiful it makes the Milky Way seem inadequate? But, before words can form on his tongue, he feels a supernova exploding against his lips. Soonyoung’s hands are clutching at his cheeks; his skin is cold against Wonwoo’s own warm, flushed red face, and the bite of his fingertips is drowned out as he falls into the black hole of their kiss. It takes him a minute to compute that he’s kissing Soonyoung… Or, rather, the boy was kissing him; Wonwoo was as much use in that moment as a lump of moon rock floating aimlessly in space. Nevertheless, as he shuts his eyes and shifts closer to the boy on the towel, kissing him back as best as he knows how, Wonwoo paints constellations behind his eyelids. He replaces the various dots of colours he sees with stars, connecting them with every touch from Soonyoung’s hands—on his cheeks, his neck, in his hair, on his chest—until he’s painted something more spectacular than Van Gogh’s “[ _The Starry Night_ ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/1280px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)”. 

As they pull apart, Wonwoo wonders why people envision fireworks when they’re kissing when he feels as if he’s been floating in amongst the planets and stars with the way his stomach is in his chest. He had convinced himself many years ago that nothing was more beautiful than a bright, clear, dazzling night sky, but lying beside Soonyoung with his hands still grasping his cheeks, staring into the boy’s now open, happy eyes, he knows that’s only because he hadn’t met this Soonyoung yet.

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me because you knew I wanted to kiss you when you were at my house,” Wonwoo admits shamelessly, albeit quietly, not needing his voice to travel any further than the space between them. The stars couldn’t listen in on them tonight; they were no longer privy to Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s galaxy. “You pointed out a school photo on my wall and from then on I was acting weird because I realised something about you from long ago, and I thought maybe you’d pushed me away because of it.” Soonyoung’s fingers are brushing his cheek so gently Wonwoo feels as if he could explode, but he goes on. “I’m going to sound like such a fucking creep for saying this…”

“No, what is it?” Soonyoung prompts him, their noses touching. 

“I don’t know if you remember anything from kindergarten considering how young we were, but I knew you before you showed up to the club that day, even before I vaguely knew you from class. In kindergarten we were in the same year, but not the same class. Every Tuesday you used to wear this bright blue sweater to school and run around in recess showing it off. It was painted with tons of stars, and I used to think it was the most beautiful thing, how the boy wearing that sweater reflected the stars so much. Because of that… because of you, I used to ask my parents all the time to buy me books and decorations to do with stars. You’re the reason I have such a home amongst the lights in the sky. Thank you.”

Soonyoung kisses him again, this time softer, shorter, but it says just as much as it had done in the first time their lips met. Wonwoo’s heart swells, leaps, bounds across his chest in glee, fuelling him enough to also launch a rocket to the Sun. 

“Now, you’ve also got a bit of me up there too.”

Wonwoo grins against the boy’s mouth, “I told you, no real astrophysicist at NASA is going to mark your star down as Hoshi in their findings.”

“No, but now it’s up there for you too, star boy. Even if it isn’t part of my favourite constellation.”

Pulling away slightly so he can look in the boy’s eyes properly, Wonwoo raises his eyebrows in happy curiosity. “You finally found one?”

Soonyoung nods, lying properly on his back with his head tilted towards Wonwoo, smile still on his face. Scrunching his nose up, Soonyoung runs one hand through his hair whilst the other remains pressed between the two of them. “You have to promise not to laugh at me.” 

He doesn’t know how he could ever, considering the story behind his attachment to the crab in the sky. So, with a shake of his head, Wonwoo smiles in a way that silently asks Soonyoung to go on, wondering if there is a colour in the universe more beautiful than the rosiness of Soonyoung’s cheeks. 

“Cassiopeia.”

“Why would I laugh at that?” Wonwoo frowns, linking the boy’s fingers with his own cautiously until the other holds on tight. “It’s one of the most beautiful constellations out there.”

“You don’t know the reason why. It’s…” Soonyoung huffs out a breathy laugh, clearly embarrassed to tell him, but Wonwoo happily waits in anticipation, curious as to his reasoning of the beautiful pattern of stars being his favourite. “Well, apart from all the mythology behind it—about the Greek Queen’s unrivalled beauty… do you know what letter it looks like?” 

He flicks through the catalogue of star-based knowledge in his brain until he finds the answer, blinking slowly at the boy.

“A _‘W’_.”

“Exactly.” Soonyoung smiles and brings the back of his hand to press against his lips. He kisses the skin there five times in the shape of the constellation, and Wonwoo’s heart stops when he realises what the boy is about to say.

“For Wonwoo.” 

/

Whenever Wonwoo makes the move to hold Soonyoung’s hand from then on, when he can tell Soonyoung needs something more than just his star in the sky to grasp onto, the heat between the flushness of their hands makes Wonwoo feel like he’s keeping the Sun alight. This time he pulls his fingers out of Soonyoung’s when his mother and father start teasing him at the dinner table, shrinking down in his seat to the sound of his brother’s laughter and Soonyoung’s giggles making a reappearance. The boy’s eyes on him, twinkling under the lights of the room, are what Wonwoo guesses his hand is to Soonyoung in the moments he needs reassurance. He’s smiling down at him with a look so fond, Wonwoo can forget about the playful teasing and heat on his cheeks in favour of losing himself to the midnight of Soonyoung’s pupils.

/

It takes them a bit of persuasion with the help of Ms Adelphi to get the club back up and running, but now, Tuesdays are not only Wonwoo’s favourite day of the week. Soonyoung agrees that they are his favourite too, especially now that they can go back to how things used to be. Except now, as Soonyoung peers through the lens of the telescope, the steady hand holding onto the frame of the equipment is linked with Wonwoo’s own.

Once his turn is up and Soonyoung pulls away to put a quick kiss to Wonwoo’s cheek and lips, he signals that it is now his friend’s turn after all his insistent pestering. Wonwoo laughs and watches as Chan hops down from the desk, pulling the earbud he had been sharing with Hansol out as he does so. His smile is wide and he waves his hand at Soonyoung explaining how careful he has to be, because the telescope was expensive.

Hansol elbows Wonwoo’s side and teases him about how well he’s trained his boyfriend, and Wonwoo can’t help but feel himself glow at the use of the word that drowns out his _boyfriend_ and his _boyfriend’s_ best friend squabbling just paces away. 

“You know, Hoshi doesn’t suit you anymore. I have a new name for you instead.”

“Oh yeah, and what’s that?”

“ _Baka._ ”

“You asshole, I know that means ‘idiot’! You forget we used to watch _Naruto_ together. Stick with ‘Hoshi’.”

“Idiot suits you better, right Wonwoo?”

Soonyoung thins his eyes at him, but Wonwoo can't help but notice the hint of a smile on his lips. He shrugs at his boyfriend, his heart warm. "If the shoe fits."

"Oh, I won't forget this, star boy."

/

In March they visit the observatory and Wonwoo points out Cancer to Soonyoung, leading the boy to scoff ‘ _as if I couldn’t spot it a mile away_.’ As if he hasn’t got the stars in ink on his chest over his heart.

As the planets and stars waltz before them across the domed sky of the planetarium, Wonwoo writes poetry in his mind, adding to his written collection of stardust that makes up his own constellation. Soonyoung appears in the majority of them, as he’s come to realise that he doesn’t need some faux star named after him when he has his own beacon of light and happiness that fills the empty space in his life right beside him. Between the solid ground and the endless universe, he has Soonyoung, and no Cassiopeia or Cancer could ever hold a crown to his eternal, radiant beauty or the way he makes everything, even the stars in the sky he adores so much, feel inadequate to his love.

**Author's Note:**

> ISN'T THE ARTWORK BEAUTIFUL??? i couldn't be happier with it, and once again i have to say the biggest thank you to my wonderful partner [keia](http://twitter.com/keiakiyay) for producing it. PLEASE check out their profile to see more of the stuff they do, because my god do they deserve it <3 it has been an honour to be your partner and to produce this with you. 
> 
> thank you to everyone that made it through this! some parts of this fic are a few of my favourite things i've ever written, so i really hope you enjoyed. i could write about these two stargazing forever, but i wanted to keep it short and sweet. and thank you to everyone at soonwoonet for making this minibang possible ily
> 
> have a spectacular day!! all my love, [rosie](http://twitter.com/TARANTlSM)


End file.
